I have been checking out the Grizzly 0454Z model. 20" wide with spiral head and 5hp. About $2400. Also looked at the identical machine with straight knives for $750 less. Both are out of stock. I would get the spiral head. Not sure I understand, but you can add a Shelix had to the straight knife for $995. I wonder if the spiral had in the other one is a shelix? Odd to me they would use two different spiral heads, but they son'e specifically say the other one is a shelix.
Isn't there a distinct difference in the geometry between Shelix and Grizzly? Maybe confused with the different spiral heads since I don't own any. I thought one has straight segments, the other have a slight curve on the segment. Grizzly is having trouble with inventory. Lots of folks waiting for jointers and planers from what I have read about cast iron parts being in short supply. They could give you a number of where you would be in line, but shipping dates would not be reliable in my mind. I would also be nervous about buying when they have big backlogs. Based on a band saw I bought from them when they were in backlog. I assume quality drops when the factory is behind in orders and are pressured to ship machines. My machine had to be returned it was so bad.
Yes they do carry their own inserted spiral head as well as the Shelix from Byrd. As I stated I have the Grizzly joiner with their head and my planer has the Byrd Shelix head.
They do use different inserts and their is some difference in the head geometry and they use different inserts. However I cannot tell much if any difference in the actual finish of the wood from either one!
One other benefit is that the spiral heads seem to be much quieter (still somewhat loud) and seem to take less power to remove the same material. I have never slowed either one of my tools down and have taken some heavy cuts on fairly wide white Oak boards.
In my opinion I would not pay extra for the Shelix head as I can't see any finish improvement!
Its been several years ago since I compared the Delta, Powermatic and other import equipment at a woodworking show in Indianapolis, but at that time the Grizzly appeared to me to be better quality than the name brands.
I know I purchased the Powermatic woodworking drill press for around $1000 and sure am not impressed with the fit, finish or quality. It is quite noisy in operation and I have had trouble with the Jacobs chuck adapter falling out of the drill press shank. The "tool-less" chuck also requires Channel locks to loosen and remove bits.
Had I known of the quality of the Powermatic I would have purchased a Grizzly press.
You would know the one I want is the one on backorder. OTOH I don't really need the planer, so I thought what the heck, I will just order it and take it when it comes in. Reading the reviews, people have waited 6 months or more, but that was "last" time. And Dick raises an interesting point with the quality control on rushed orders. Things that make you say Hmmm.
I have a Powermatic 18" like what Ellis has for sale in Classified. It has an on-board knife grinder. With sharp knives I get as good a finish as I have seen off any machine. I typically begin sanding at 120 grit off this machine to remove glaze.
Many large machines suffer two problems. They may be set up for rough planing. And/or if they don't have on-board knife grinding they are tedious to set up perfect and as a result are rarely set up perfect.
A heavy machine is inherently more able to produce a good finish. They can hold lumber better, the cutter head is larger diameter and there is no vibration. I get no snipe, for example.
Anyone in the vicinity of Ellis that has the room should be beating a path to snag his machine. It is ideal for a serious home shop.
I think it will be worth waiting for. I had a similar wait on my planer, Wilke had the planer but not the Byrd head. At that time the Byrd back-order time was unknown, so they offered to ship me the planer with a straight blade head, with the Byrd head to be following as soon as it was available, for my installation.
Son and I ran a few hundred feet of lumber through the straight blade head, and the Byrd head came in a few weeks later. We had very little problem installing the new head and it has ran fine since ~ about 10 years.
They make the same planer with straight knives and you can get the Byrd head for $950. That would make the Byrd head $200 more than the same planer with the Grizzly head. So, I'm trying to screw up my courage to order the planer and see what comes in first.
I wonder if the cutters would be the same as the cutters on my jointer head I got from Byrd?
Barry, as I have a Grizzly Jointer and a Byrd head in my planer I don't have first hand knowledge. However I did look at a couple of sites and both state the same inserts are used on ALL Shelix heads. Here is one of the sites with genuine Byrd inserts:
Planer finish is kinda a moot point in the fact that you are going to be sanding the surface anyway. Of course there are exceptions to the rules. Like if the finish is really bad it'll take more sanding to get it right. Then again if you're getting a bad finish you need to be sharping knives and making adjustments, and if that doesn't work look for a replacement.
Spiralhead cutters, especially those that shear cut, have 3 advantages in wood.
1 - less tear out in cross grain
2 - way less tear out in figured grain wood
3 - better at planning thin wood
They are quieter, but they take more power to run. About an nincompoop can change the blades it's so easy.
I apologize Barry for hijacking your thread, but you seem to be a serious woodworker and I believe serious woodworkers need serious tools especially key tools such as the jointer and planer. I've sold lunchbox style planers, but can't say I've ever seen one used. As for their limitations I see them as problems. However they are a Godsend to those with limited funds, limited space, and need the portability for a job site.
I have absolutely no complaint about my lunchbox planer. It has performed exactly as I expected and better. It was a game changer in my shop. I would recommend it to anyone.
OTOH, it is not a 5 hp 20" planer with a spiral head. It won't take off an 1/8" in a pass, but I never thought it would.
I have just reached the point in my life where my kids are grown and doing well and it dawned on me that some of this money is mine and I can spend some on me without wondering if it will knock one of them out or a year of college or I will have to eat beans for a year. There just might be a bigger planer in my future and maybe a bigger bandsaw too. Stop me if I am getting carried away.
I never calculated it but it certainly seems the segmented head would require less power to make the same cut (width of wood and depth of cut). The straight blade machine makes a cut across the entire width of the wood at the same time, while the segmented carbide cutter removes less than 3/4" at a time and in a shearing motion.
While the straight blade cutters are expending all the power in 4 cuts per rotation the segmented cutter is almost a continuous cut throughout the rotation.
I have a hard time visualizing how the segmented cutter would require more power. I have never felt any motor slowing with my 5 hp 20" segmented head planer even when planing oak panels 16" wide taking approximately .050" cut.
If segmented heads required more power, a dubious claim, then changing the planer to use one would require a motor upgrade. Do the sellers of these things require a motor upgrade when selling a retrofit, or do new machines come with larger motors if they have this option?
What requires more power are dull knives. The effect is not subtle. For a while we got by with a 13" planer and 3 HP motor. It was marginal for our planing needs and the motor was often under strain on heavy cuts in wide lumber. The condition of the knives had a large effect on the depth of cut I could take on oak, for example.
When I upgraded my PM100 to a segmented cutter head if anything the load on the motor was reduced, based on the noise level (I didn't bother buying a clamp on ammeter to actually measure this).
I would expect the load vs. time to be roughly the same, but the peak loads when the long blade cuts to be smoothed out to more of a steady state load as each little blade cuts in sequence.
Noise level would be a poor measure of motor load. Here's a link to a Woodweb discussion about power requirements;
With the Byrd head I could cut 8" wide African mahogany 1/4" deep but not poplar or oak. This surprised the tech at Byrd. He'd seen similar reduction in power capability with small table top planer but never on an industrial machine. His very logical explanation is that a three knife head has a time gap between each planer knife strike for the head to rebuild rpm speed.
Another; Contrary to conventional Internet wisdom, side-by-side comparisons have found helical heads to be more demanding on the motor. In the tests, machine fitted with a helical head drew more amperage than an identical machine fitted with a straight-knife cutterhead. The current explanation for this is that a cutter is always engaged with the material, producing a constant load on the motor.
If someone has measured average current draw of the two cases with similarly sharp knives I certainly believe the data. However, the explanation I don't. There is a boggling amount of inertia(stored energy) in an industrial machine's spinning cutter head. Further, there is huge inductance and capacitance in the motor circuit. There is no way the conventional cutter head is accelerating between knife blows.
However, the segmented knives make a substantially different chip. It may be that it takes more energy to make this chip than one made off a conventional cutter head.
Read original post. What this person says about a 13" planer with 3 HP motor is contrary to my experience using a similar machine to plane thousands of bdft of lumber for our business when we had a small machine. 1/4" cuts any width? really? I wouldn't do 1/4" cuts in hardwood on our big planer. African mahogany ok and poplar not? I don't regard anything this person says about planing is credible.
I've never run a segment head, nor even seen one. But with the explanation that it doesn't matter what direction you feed it, or figured grain comes out perfectly, I've always concluded it is more of a scraping action compared to cutting. I had a big Yates-American 24" industrial planer. After running it for the first time in hard maple, I had a disaster of a cut. Chip out was horrible! I called them and they wanted the serial number on the cutter head. They told me it was set for optimal cutting in softwood. For better results in hard and brittle wood, they suggested a 10 degree angle on the front of the blade and then traditional angle on the back. It made it a wonderful machine. But with 7.5 horsepower, I noticed no difference in machine performance. With small bench top machines being sold or retrofitted with segment heads, a 10 percent difference in current draw to machine the same amount of wood, would certainly be noticed.
Sorry, I missed where you said noise wasn't a good indicator, all I read was that you said you didn't use a meter to verify your impression. My mistake.
About fifty years ago I bought a book on designing wood working machines. All kinds of weird and wonderful info on things like cutter head design and horse power and gearing and knife design and sharpening. I loaned the book to a friend about 49 years ago and he still has it. They had information on back beveling knives in jointers and planers. Made no sense to me, obviously a less keen knife. Maybe they knew something I did not.